Home Gym

To start training from home you’re going to need to create your own home gym.

This means finding the right gym equipment for preparing your new workout space.

Now whether that’s a spare room, your living room, or even a garage, you need a space to start.

The exact gym equipment you’re going to need is going to depend largely on the goals of your workouts, and what you’re trying to achieve.

The equipment you need to burn calories and lose weight for instance, is quite different from what you would use to build muscle.

Building muscle is still actually one of the key ways to burn fat.

The more muscle you build the more you’ll drive up your metabolism.

You’ll find there are certain things and certain principles that will apply no matter what your aims are.

And there are definitely some specific pieces of equipment everyone should own.

Let’s take a look at what some of those items are and how you should approach this process.

You’re going be faced with some unique challenges when you begin building your gym at home.

The first of these is a simple fact that your home gym shouldn’t cost too much.

If you’re relatively new to the gym and you don’t have any equipment, it can be tempting to stock up with everything you think you might ever need.

This can end up costing you a small fortune! And there really is no need. It’s at your home after all, so you can continue to add more equipment to your gym over time.

Likewise you need to think about how you’re going to store your equipment if you have a room dedicated to being a gym in your house.

The best tip in this regard is to start small and then build your way up.

This means buy just a few items that you absolutely need to begin with. And then approaching the process in a way that leaves you with the potential to expand and build upon that start.

Take dumbbells for example now dumbbells are useful for practically every workout under the sun. You can hit all manner of different body parts but you’re going to need dumbbells that are heavy enough for your workouts.

If you hope to really make an impact on your muscle growth you need to have dumbbells that are of a variety of weights. Of course heavy enough depends not only on your current progress, which is going to change with time, but also on the specific exercise.

For example, if you’re doing lateral dumbbell raises, these are difficult exercises to perform with anything above 10 kilograms. Even for a trained athlete.

So the way to approach this challenge is to start out with dumbbells that can be increased and decreased in size.

This means you should be able to remove an add weight weights based of the exercise movement required.

And as you build up normally you can get dumbbell sets for around 30 dollars to let you increase the weight up to about 20 kilograms.

This is a great starting point.

Or you might want to buy two lots of dumbbells which will then allow you to build up further still.

This is just one example of how you can approach a home gym in a modular and compact way. While at the same time saving money because setting up your own gym is not exactly cheap.

Another example of something like this is the pull up bar.

This is an incredibly versatile piece of fitness equipment and one that will cost you about ten dollars.

You can even get a pull up bar that doesn’t need fixing onto the wall like this one. They’ll simply fit over the door frame in order to fix into place.

The best piece of equipment to use with your pull up bar, are the gymnastic rings.

Gymnastic rings are simply plastic rings that are attached to a rope and can be looped over a pull up bar.

These allow you to perform ring dips muscle ups the Iron Cross reverse push ups. As well as pull ups from a lower height with your legs touching the floor stretched out in front of you.

And the best thing about gymnastic rings is they cost very little and they can be stored away easily.

A skipping rope meanwhile is a great alternative to a and while you can do a surprising amount of exercise with it.

There are also lots of things you can do with everyday items from around the home.

So think a little outside the box.

Use these tips and the principles to build yourself a gym that does everything you need, without taking up all the space in your home.

If you’re looking for specific instructions then this is a good list of equipment that you can invest in.

Again you can buy these pieces of equipment over time to gradually build up your gym.

Note that none of these things are absolutely essential to get started except the pull up bar and possibly the dumbbells depending on your interests and goals.

First is the pull up bar and as mentioned a pull up bar is the bare minimum you need to start training to lose weight and build muscle.

The reason for this is that the majority of muscles can be trained using body weight alone by performing press ups.

You can train the chest and the shoulders by performing sit ups.

You can train the abs by doing lots of different workouts for your stomach. However the parts that are hardest to train without equipment are the biceps and the lats.

These are pulling muscles meaning you need to be pulling something in order to work them.

Seeing as you can’t pull the floor towards you, that means you either need to hang or curl once you have a pull up bar.

With just a pull up bar you can train your entire body, though it will be easier if you get a couple more items like dumbbells.

Dumbbells are incredibly versatile and are used for much more than just bicep curls. They can also be used for all manner of presses for triceps for rows the work the lads.

You can also use them to add weight to your body while you train your legs.

Make sure you get dumbbells that can be increased in weight.

Start with 20kg worth and buy two sets giving you 40kg in total.

If you already have a good level of strength then a good piece of equipment to add is an exercise bench.

Investing in a bench can take your training to the next level as you can now do far more exercises and work your entire body.

This will allow you to use your dumbbells in a much more efficient manner so you can do dumbbell presses, flies and all kinds of other exercises.

The best bench will be one that has an adjustable back and this will mean you can sit on it, or lie on it. That will in turn mean you can do isolation curls and other moves with it as well.

On top of this look at getting yourself a bench that can fold up in order to put it away. This way you can take your bench under a bed or inside a cupboard.

It doesn’t have to get in your way in your home.

Next up, is the exercise mat.

Now this is not completely essential but you’ll find that training without an exercise mat can cause your floor to become slippery with sweat, and can make a mess of your home.

What’s more is that a mat will make it easier for you to perform moves like sit ups, without hurting your back or buttocks on the hard ground.

It’s also good for stretching and also skipping rope which is a good way for burning calories on the spot.

Then there’s kettle bells.

Now that you begin to get more advanced for train the legs and burning calories, kettle bells are incredibly useful. And that’s because they will allow you to perform kettle bell swings and all kinds of squats, such as goblet squats.

This in turn will mean that you can build leg strength without needing a bar to perform deadlifts and squats.

That’s good news because performing deadlift and squats requires a lot of space in your room and are expensive to set up. A kettle bell can instead be used for all kinds of functional strength exercises, including things like one armed presses.

Then there are gymnastic rings.

Now we’ve already touched on the amazing benefits of gymnastic rings and the great thing is that these will let you do all the same exercises that TRX does, but for a fraction of the price!

In fact gymnastic rings will let you do a lot more exercises, considering TRX isn’t really suitable for dips as one example.

Finally there’s a bench press.

If you really want to get serious a full bench press will eventually be a good investment.

This will mean getting a bar as well, in which case you might want to move into a permanent setup. This way you aren’t loading and unloading the bar every time you want to lift.

So that’s a sum up of what you need to make a gym at your home. As you can see you can start out with just some basic equipment like the pull up bar, gymnastic rings, exercise mat and some dumbbells.

Later you can begin to add more to your gym, like a bench press and possibly even some more advanced fitness equipment.

The most important thing to realize, is that you don’t need to buy all the equipment in one go. Rather you can buy a little and build up your gym over time.

Sophie Jones leads detox and weight loss retreats around the world from Bali to Costa Rica and many more places in between. Join her on her quest to help her clients lose weight, fully detoxify and begin a new healthy lifestyle. sophie@cleanseplan.com

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